


Good Bottle, Bad Bottle

by mantra4ia



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Brotherly Love, Choice, Code Words, F/M, Family, Love, Ultimatums, What family means, good bottle bad bottle, unspoken companions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:10:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9200378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantra4ia/pseuds/mantra4ia
Summary: Sherlock's life has forever been all about choice,but the lesson he's always failed to fully absorb is that sometimes the most valuable choice you possess is deciding not to make one. It's against his very nature, a lackadaisical way of life that is only a rouse for really living. But really, the deeper fear in him to acknowledge no choice at all is to admit that sometimes life and result are out of your hands. Sometimes your friends choose for you.The choices you make are not entirely your own, no more than a single drop of water can claim ownership of the river and all it's currents.





	1. The Viral Influence

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I started to write this before "The Lying Detective" aired in the US, based on the Doyle story "The Dying Detective" where Culverton Smith is not a wealthy entrepreneur but a man who specializes in tropical diseases. After 4x2 aired, I did not want to write Culverton out now that he'd been arrested, so I decided to write this as an escape story, his contingency plan for being caught if you will.
> 
> Also after 4x2, I wanted to add in Eurus, so she plays a very dominant role as you'll soon read.
> 
> It's also very unapologetically Sherlolly, not entirely polished, but I wanted to finish it before 4x3 aired in the US in case The Final Problem caused any major character death. I may continue to edit the work until it reads to my own satisfaction, so feel free to critique character authenticity.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She knocked the smug look off my face, fortunately I was wearing a second, smaller smug look underneath."

Watson had asked him once, "Do you understand the feelings Molly Hooper has for you?"

"I know that she's a bit enamored with me, and I use it to our mutual advantage. She gives me corpses, I give her glances. She provides pathological experience, I share a smile or two."

"How very mercurial," Watson said. Sherlock knew that combination, the blunt statement with the upward inflection of question. It was something like astonishment and disapproval in one expression. "However, knowing and understanding are quite different things, Sherlock."

"I leave it to you to refurbish the things I have said, John, and use them in your favor against me.  Are you referring to Bloom's taxonomy of learning or some other variant such as motor learning by Fitts an Posner?" Leave it to Sherlock to make a complexity out of straight forward human feeling, Watson thought. "If you believe that I observe Molly without comprehension, then you are only partially correct. I recognize her feelings, I understand the value she places upon them, I simply do not understand what added value they somehow accrue by being shared. "

That of course was a necessary lie, John deduced, because he countered with, "I see...let me put it another way. When did you first understand that you have feelings for Molly?"

So Sherlock gave a little strategic ground in hopes to cease the incessant questioning and focus. **But what was it that he was supposed to focus on?** "I have absolutely no idea." But that was also untrue. It was a Tuesday, three years ago in the lab, with three little words. He could see John going through the possibilities in his mind, it was written on his face, but he would never guess.      

> "What could I possibly need from you?" Sherlock remembered saying it casually while staring through the x10 magnification lens of the microscope. In the midst of her usual self-doubt and superfluous self-editing that halted her speech and increased the sweat of her palms, just as Sherlock had reached focus and turned the lens to x40, Molly said, "Nothing. _I don't know._ " And as suddenly as the slide had been in focus, everything blurred and he was attuned to her: her thought process, her line of sight, her intonation. She was interesting. Most people were ignorant of their ignorance, or if they had some semblance of self-awareness, they blanched at all the things they didn't know and tried to conceal them. Molly lacked that instinct.
> 
> Certainly she was ignorant of things, ignorant of male attentions first and foremost. Oblivious to the fact that red lipstick would not attract further attentions, just as unattractive sweaters would not deter it. She emitted a presence simply by being in a room that caught the attraction of men both crude and gentlemen-like, which she had not the slightest practice in responding to, making her appear to the novice observer a blundering idiot. But the truth is that to varying degrees all people were towering mountains of ignorance in this way. Perhaps not mountains but holes, with a field with dirt all around them, waiting to be filled. But the more you sate your ignorance, the more holes you realize you've made, and the more panicked you become.
> 
> Not Molly. Where others had fear, she had honesty. _She didn't know._ Fascinating. 
> 
> "I don't know," she repeated, this time in barely more than a breath.
> 
> "Well maybe I..." Sherlock began, but already she was leaving and it was beyond him to deduce what would motivate her to stay.

"So you do feel something for her! You can finally admit that much? Record time your making." John's voice interrupted his reverie.

 **"Please shut up John."** Sherlock finally said out loud. And with that the layers of the palace began to close. The lab door shut and the memory of Molly went dark, John marched out of the flat and the memory of his infatuation-interrogation dimmed in kind. Sherlock was left standing in a sparely furnished, dim and dank room with John just behind and to his right at attention, Mycroft to his left supported by the wall, and toe to toe with Culverton Smith who was twirling Mycroft's umbrella in large arcs forwards and backwards like it was his most prized possession.

"There's another person here in the room with us, I know it." He could hear something, and it wasn't the armed guards behind the singular entrance door or the ones on the grated catwalk with their killer vantage points looming above. 

"Curiouser and curiouser" Culverton mused, the enjoyment evident not in the twirl of the umbrella, but in the way his heels barely brushed the ground as he approached Sherlock. He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Four bodies in the room, yet five people present, how do you figure that?" 

Sherlock's mind was agonizing about the mystery  _who_ in the room, his mind palace had turned up nothing useful to his deductions, and time was running short for Mycroft. "Keep holding up the building brother mine, you're doing a fine job."

"Fetch me my umbrella, brother dear, and I won't have to."

As Watson listened to the brothers Holmes continue their frivolous conversation under dire circumstances, he knew that there was some code between them, even if he couldn't recognize what it was. They had such extensive memories that each word might have some ulterior meaning, and yet further still a given sequence of words might have a completely different meaning than their individual parts through word associations. The permutations were vast, but John noticed it didn't bother Culverton at all. He was aware of a hidden message, he just didn't care. Meanwhile, as a medical man, John cared a great deal about how long the banter could go on and if he could use it as a suitable distraction to slowly cross the space separating him from the ailing elder Holmes. John had been instructed, no advised, that if he moved more then one foot at any moment, Culverton would put a bullet between Sherlock's eyes. Mycroft also advised John to believe it.

He desperately hoped, against better judgment, that Molly was making break through progress at St. Barts stemming the outbreak that had felled Mycroft. What had started nearly three weeks ago with four random sick cases that only Sherlock saw connections among had now grown to nearly epidemic proportions as boroughs of London were quarantined to isolate and treat the ill of a suspected act of pathological terrorism. The crisis had nearly cleaved their ranks in two. Sherlock, Lestrade, and Mycroft in concert were hand selecting teams of investigation to gather evidence leading to the center of the outbreak AND smoke out the human element orchestrating the wave of devastating illness, while John and Molly were up to their necks in postmortems, sample strains, clinical lab testing, and frantic attempts to discover an inoculation. Which was bloody near impossible, as Molly was the first to discover when two of the first four patients in the case, presenting with similar symptoms, were diagnosed as contaminated with entirely different virulent stains and subsequently died. So every available staff went scrambling when they discovered the the need for not one but several inoculations, _and_  on call to treat the symptoms of the ill, _and_  working round the clock to keep patients cordoned or isolated to prevent lethal cross contamination because know one yet knew for sure which illnesses where transmittable. To beat it all, the pathogens popping up weren't all strictly viral: parasites, bacterial infections, you name it they saw it, all released into the general population like a masterful symphony of disease. Some stains hadn't been active in decades. Even the best and brightest first responders from the World Health Organization were struggling to keep up.

And then on Saturday Molly got the call that could only be from Sherlock. Her face changed, hardened somehow, and from that moment she ate, drank, and slept at St. Barts. She abandoned the autopsy room almost completely in favor of the laboratory, in perpetual motion nearly as quick as the centrifuge. Because Mycroft was ill. And Sherlock needed her. 

But Molly's efforts, though tireless, had not been enough. Sherlock's relentless hunting had led them to cell of Culverton Smith, not only a philanthropist and a serial killer but a connoisseur in the field of disease as it happened (a hobby he called it); though Sherlock was still working out how he could execute such a feat from prison. It would require a vast network of accomplices willing to risk their life and limb, and for what? Culverton's frozen fortunes? To that effect Mycroft suggested that anyone could be bought, leading Sherlock to suspect that Smith was no exception, and the price for Culverton's expertise (and by extension the price for Mycroft's life) was a get out of jail free card to kill again.

But in the end, it was all been a lure, a bait, a trap, and in a locked-down lab Sherlock and company found themselves faced with gun and once again at the whims of a serial killer who now it seems was 'branching out.'

Culverton paused the umbrella's orbit at roughly 7'oclock as he stepped back from Sherlock again and toward Mycroft as if to gloat. "Well, younger Holmes, how's is it possible?" 

"The attempted assassination of my brother, the head of British Government, or the fifth invisible person in the room?"

"Either will do for a start," Culverton smiled. "You may tend to you patient now Doctor Watson, he's not long for this world now." 

John launched into action as Mycroft slumped down the wall. He didn't have gloves, but he wasn't much concerned with his own safety at the moment. As he loosened Mycroft's tie and tried to arrange the proud, stubborn man on the floor in the best possible position, he implored with the madman in the room. "Tell me, _what_ did you infect him with? Is it transmittable?" No admission. "If not that, then _how_ did you do it, hmm? Give me something."

Nothing.

"Bacteria, virus, parasite, toxin? Come on."

"You're a rather good doctor, narrow it down."

 _Arboviruses, Rotavirus, dengue fever, Lassa fever, flu strains, Malaria stains, bacterial infections, protozoan based diseases, pox, what?_ Without lab equipment John was constrained to treating the symptoms. No, work it out, what Sherlock can do with evidence he could do with symptoms, he reminded himself. So he began to construct his own mind palace aloud.

"Early symptoms of fatigue, fever and muscle aches," Watson began.

"Narrows it down," Sherlock affirmed. If they weren't all hostages to a changeable madman, Sherlock would be intrigued by the sense of fulfillment that accompanied this supporting role reversal.

"Mycroft, how many days ago did this start? When did symptoms present?"

"Four days ago," Mycroft whinged, "with a pain in my back."

 _Fast incubation period,_ John mulled.

"Narrows it down."

"Any headaches, dizziness?" Watson continued.

Mycroft managed a small nod. "With chills..." he began, but Watson finished when he found it too difficult to put to words. His look was rather distant, he'd seen that look on Sherlock when he retreated into his thoughts, an act of preservation.

"...nausea, and abdominal pain."

"Think it through Watson, what picture do you see in your mind?" Sherlock urged, standing perfectly still facing Mr. Smith, observing his movements or lack thereof. He stood ramrod straight with Mycroft's umbrella spinning rhythmically.

It was all becoming quite clear, and grim as John was staring down at Mycroft's drawn and ashen face. Coughing and shortness of breath, with the sensation of breathing through a damp cloth.

"Sherlock, I think we might be dealing with a mutated strain of hantavirus."

"Appropriate, given out dealings with this vermin," Sherlock kept his malice gaze fixed of Culverton, but his tone was level.

"But without lab work I can't be sure, let alone what strain it's been altered it from. Hantavirus shouldn't transmit person to person otherwise unless someone's fooled with it."

Sherlock confronted Culverton, "Been playing with things you shouldn't? It's a wonder they let you have toys in prison. Who's been bringing you sweeties?" But Culverton only stood there, a toothy smile germinating, cracking it's way through the mire of his face. It filled Sherlock with an angry disgust not to be able to deduce that wicked grin.

"It's alright John, that gives Molly what she needs..." Sherlock said as he was discreetly typing away at the phone in his coat pocket and pressed send.

 


	2. The Burn

It was then that Sherlock observed the oddity. No change. Not a tick, not a pause, the umbrella did not even slow within Culverton's grasp. No pause where there should have been when someone registers an unfamiliar name.

"Be silent, all of you. Not a sound!" It was quite difficult to still Mycroft as he struggled to breathe evenly, but in that moment of distilled calm Sherlock heard it. An electronic text message tone and a kind of shallow breathing. From Culverton's pocket. And he knew then what his mind palace had been trying to tell him all along if he wasn't so thick. The presence was as undeniable as it was unmistakable.

"I assume you heard all that? Does the good Doctor's assessment align with your conclusions, Ms. Hooper?" Mr. Smith withdrew his own phone from his interior jacket pocket as he spoke. "I give you permission to speak now. I won't gut them all, cross my heart." He set the phone down on the solitary chair in the room.

"Molly, are you alright?" Sherlock queried.

It took her moments longer than it should have to respond to either one of the men, and when she did it was not the response Sherlock wanted.

"John has the correct diagnosis." From the short sentence Sherlock could not gather much except that her intonation was flat and slow. The possibilities came quickly: drugged, tortured, head trauma, all probable causes relating to some sort of impaired cognizance or altered state of consciousness, so he tried again. "Are you okay, Molly?"

"As well as can be expected, Sherlock." John watched the muscles tense and flex just beneath Sherlock's cheek, as if he were gnawing away at something while Molly spoke, and it occurred to him that perhaps they too shared a similar, simpler, less detectable cipher between them. Sherlock measured her quality of speech again, more perplexed. The lack of peaks and valleys in her voice wasn't drug induced but stress induced, a self-restrained even-keel to hold back panic. The slower lilt of her speech did not sound like it came from injury, but a strained voice. Had she been yelling? Crying? Without his other senses, without seeing her, Sherlock struggled to pin the cause of the alarm that was blaring in his head. In his mind he started to build as detailed an image of Molly as he could sitting in the chair before him.

"And what would you say about Mycroft's prognosis, Molly?" Culverton was asserting his control over the situation with each word.

"Grim, without an ET intubation and pulmonary drainage," Molly's hollow voice echoed in the cold and empty room. "John, treat it as you would acute respiratory distress. Hantavirus has greatest impact on the lungs." She feared saying too much and edging Culverton to react.

"I can't Molly, I have no tools, no equipment, it's not exactly a sterile environment."

"You were a field medic, doctor Watson, surely you can do better." Culverton was just gloating now, and Sherlock was seething. 

"Molly, can you help Mycroft?"

"No." _1 syllable._

It was then that Watson figured it out. Sherlock looked grim, but not nearly as he should. Losing Mycroft, John knew, would break his heart. Something was missing in his pain, that anger the frequently accompanied his urgent distress. Then it hit him. Sherlock only asked Molly yes or no questions, but she responded at length. They were speaking in simple binary, an odd number of syllables meant yes whereas even syllables meant no.

Culverton interrupted his concentration, "Don't be modest Molly, you've already helped a good deal."

John cautiously deduced from the previous conversation; Molly _could_ help Mycroft, but somewhere, wherever she was, she was _NOT_ alright. He was is on the game now, so he tested his luck. "Molly are you still in the lab?"

"Yes, I'm cultivating stains of the hantavirus now." _14_   _syllables_ -  _No_. But was she still at St Bartholomew?

"How's the rest of the hospital managing while you're holed up on your illicit side project?" Sherlock gave him a sidelong glance, _two questions about the hospital in a row_ had alerted him to the fact that John had bought into the game, but now John had to be careful. He could not give it away to Culverton.

Molly was smart too, she made her answer count. "I hardly know, it's been mad around here. I only had time for a nip to the cafeteria with _Matthew_ , stopped by the _flat_ to change, and before I knew it I was right back where I started." _Culverton's colleagues had targeted her, made her a prisoner in her own home, and one of them was still with her,_ Sherlock knew, because she didn't work with anyone named Matthew. Matthew was the man staring at her with a loaded gun, just as he was eyeing Mr. Smith.

"They'd be lost without you, Hooper." Sherlock said. It was John's turn to stare at Sherlock. He wasn't sure exactly, but that seemed very much like an unencoded message, with one exception. _He'd_ be lost. 

"Alright, you're making my teeth hurt." Culverton protested, throwing down the umbrella like a bored child. John almost laughed wondering if all exceptionally smart people -whether it was deductive savant like Sherlock, strategic prowess like Mycroft, or genius in a particular area like Mr. Smith's ruthless business savvy and amateur fascination with tropical disease - were prone to childish fits. He would have laughed if Mycroft weren't dying. Then out of the corner of his eye, John reacted just fast enough to catch a vile flying through the air. 

"What's this then?" John looked at the vile, a syringe already piercing its medical lid, like an insulin shot.

"A present from Ms Hooper. It's enough to inoculate both you and the detective, though I'm afraid it won't do Mycroft any good at this point."

"Molly, is it safe?" Sherlock asked, wishing more that she was safe.

"Of course it is." _4 syllables_ "I segmented the virus and tested it myself." _+13_ "Based on my blood serum counts, my antibodies are responding." _+16._   _Yes, it's safe Sherlock, it's not a trick_.

John proceeded to inoculate himself before filing the syringe with a second dose for Sherlock. He doubted very much, disregarding his own code of ethics, that there were qualms in the room about needle sharing, least of all from Sherlock, who now spoke carefully, "that was a risk Molly, you couldn't be sure it would work. You could have been just as incapacitated and useless as Mycroft! It was reckless."

"Shut up Sherlock," John interjected. Mycroft saved up enough breath to say "good man, Watson." 

"You're reckless everyday."

"I take calculated risks"

"You do, the biggest risks for the biggest rewards, Guesses often produce the most effective results. I can guess too, Sherlock." John felt the audible shift in the conversation, and it made him sick.

"I never guess, Molly," Sherlock hissed.

"Yes you do." Watson knew she was right, but not what she sounded so sad about it. He'd be thrilled at any chance to put Sherlock in place. Sherlock took another moment, delayed on the spectrum of emotional intelligence, to register the tone now as well. Then Watson remembered where he'd heard it before and why his stomach turned. _This was her note._

"What's this about Culverton? Why would you offer us anything? The move makes no sense."

"Because that's not the move Sherlock, this is." And in one swift gesture Mr. Smith pulled a duffel bag, previously obscured from beneath the chair, and tossed it just a bit short of center between himself and John. "It's all there. All the medical supplies that you need to get him temporarily out of danger. Or at least so Ms. Hooper advises me. Your move Sherlock."

"What are we playing, I don't see the board."

"Oh but you will."

"What are my moves?"

"One of two, Mycroft or Molly. If Dr. Watson reaches for the bag before you decide which one of them lives, none of you will leave here."

Silence befell the room and Sherlock listened over the phone to everything he could hear from Molly Hopper's flat. _He was wrong._ She hadn't been crying or screaming. She'd been straining against exhaustion. And she wasn't sitting as Sherlock imagined her. She was dangling, her toes barely touching the laminate wood floor beneath. It was so clear to him now, how had he not seen it before? Each sentence she said was measured by the length of breath she catch as her arms pulled up on a noose, delaying her asphyxiation another few moments.

Any second now, on his order, a hired gun would put a bullet in her shoulder, and no longer able to support her own weight Molly would suffer a slow hanging. Or not, his choice.

On his order, Mycroft would know the pain of prolonged suffocation as his lungs gave out. Or not, his choice. 

John thought Sherlock might break his own jaw he was grinding his teeth so hard. Mycroft observed his brother's paralysis, a nasty side effect of emotional attachment, and though he did not feel pity, he was surprised at the remorse that overtook him when Molly broke the silence and he was quickly able to deduce her motives. _Oh, Sherlock..._

"Sherlock hear me out before you make your choice. John told me once about your first case, that cabbie, the bottle, the pills." She paused, he could hear her shudder as she exhaled before focusing on the next deep breath. "I can't help but be reminded of that case. There similar you know.

"Hardly Molly," John watched as Sherlock ruffled has hair in frustration. "Which choice are you, the good or the bad, eh? Be sensible. That was a simple game of playing the man and not the board, the only life at risk was my own! This is not equivalent, not by any stretch of the imagination."

"The life at risk is still yours."

"That doesn't make any sense." Molly was under duress, surely she was coming to a false conclusion. "Stay focused," but he wondered who he was speaking to just then, Molly or himself. He could feel his hands shake without knowing why. It wasn't withdrawal, the cocaine was clear of his system for almost two weeks, when the outbreaks hit their stride and he needed to be sober.

"What little value you place on your own life. I know for certain you would have lost that game if John hadn't shot that man and saved your skin."

"How could you possibly know? You weren't even there."

"Because," her breath counted for less now, "the pills were a shell game. Moriarty wanted you to lose the real game. It's built to lose the moment you play..." the skin on the palms of her hands were beginning to tear now, "you die or you kill a man. You lose."

"That man knew the risks, he was killing himself! He was going to die anyway."

"That's probably what the cab driver thought too before he started taking lives." Sherlock found something brilliant in how quickly the intuition came to her but slow to him. _Aren't you tired of teaching me Molly?_  "I suppose you're right, Sherlock, you're always right in your way. He was going to die, we all are given enough time." Something in the way Molly said this triggered a chemical response in Sherlock. _This is what fear feels like._ "Except if he died right there in that way, it would be on your head, and you wouldn't be Sherlock anymore. John spared you that. He's the reason you won."

"How?"

"Because you can't tell Sherlock Holmes that they only way to win a game is not to play. That's not how his mind works," Molly steeled herself. "You can't function without your brother Sherlock, the loss of him would break your heart."

 _But what would the alternative do to me?_ Sherlock shouted into the hollows of his mind. No words came back. 

"You can't choose. You don't have to."

It all happened so painfully slow. Culverton gave Watson the smallest of smiles and Watson seized up the medical bag. Sherlock could not understand why Smith did not shoot Watson dead where he knelt at Mycroft's side, injecting him with a sedative before putting a scope and an ET tube down his throat. An AMBU bag shortly followed. He focused his attentions back to the phone, expecting a pause for Molly to catch her breath. But when the silence lasted 1, 2, 3 seconds too long, his mind went flying. He was there, right there in the room with her.

"Molly? Molly put your hands back on the rope," he pleaded, staring at the obscured figure before him in Molly's apartment, his vision blurred and stretched as though he himself were hanging by the noose. And all of the sudden he was suspended there.

"Pull yourself up Hooper!" he demanded, feeling he chest expand as if he were pulling as much air as he could before it was too late. In the illusion he tried to will his hands, her hands, to spring upwards and clasp and cling to life. But they would not obey the commands of her/his mind, they were actively fighting his/her instinct of self preservation. Quickly now they were beginning to tingle and become leaden. Very soon he/she wouldn't have the option to grab the rope even if the desire was there. He instinctively tried to recall the interior of her flat for anything relevant to her survival. "Whoever is there in the room, help her please!"

John worked hastily to insert a tube between Mycroft's ribs, to drain the frothy congestion that was killing him. But the sounds, the small sounds of raspiness and the occasional high-pitched shrieking gasps of air over the phone, echoing through the room were too much for John to bear any longer. "You sadistic...you coward, tell us what you want!"

A demure and happy voice finally replied, not a man but a woman, "About time you asked." Sherlock watched in his mind as Eurus stepped out from the corner of Molly's flat, just on the peripheral of her vision. "I want to burn the heart out of you. How do you like my toys, Sherlock?"

By toys, she meant these men. She loved Moriarty as only Eurus could, and used that sentiment as a weapon to groom him. She wielded Culverton just as easily. Sherlock had never been playing against them, they were the pieces, he'd been submerged in this game with Eurus for a very long time. "I overlooked Molly Hooper once, it was an oversight I'll not repeat. Do you know what she looks like Sherlock, dangling here? Have you ever watched an ant submersed in water slowly drown? It's rather glorious to watch it anamorphically." Sherlock could feel her circling Molly, getting closer as the death rattle grew clearer, more frightening, could feel Eurus' hand on his/her shoulder as she gave a small push the rocked Molly  back and forth like a metronome. Sherlock felt himself sway. It was the breaking point.

Sherlock strode forward toward the phone on the chair. Culverton made no effort to stop him, but a sniper from the rafters above clipped him in the leg. Sherlock went down like a hewn tree. "Eurus, _I love you_ , but stop this now or..."

"By all means, paint me the alternative brother."

"Or I will find you and I will skin you!" Watson looked over at his best friend in abject horror, for what he heard was the oath of a criminal. Even in the grips of panic Molly heard him too, and she was afraid, not that she was lost but that _he was lost. That it had all been for nothing._

"Oh, thank you. It must be Christmas. I love you, Sherlock."

"No Eurus, don't. Please don't leave-" The last sound he heard past her footsteps was the flat door being closed. Molly was alone. The call disconnected and Sherlock's felt like a phantom limb was severed. He was panting and sweating on the floor. John made a move to help him up, but more quickly then his eyes could follow Sherlock had Mycroft's umbrella in hand. _He must never have been going for the phone at all._ The handle was deftly disjointed and the knife produced was at Culverton's throat.

"My friends and I are leaving!"

"Well of course you are," Culverton said, the apex of politeness, "the game was over." Culverton had known for the past 5 minutes that Elizabeth Smallwood and an armed escort of military personnel were ravaging the laboratory compound floor by floor. As she burst through the doors flanked by her team, his snipers willingly laid down their arms, and snake that he was Culverton couldn't help but knife Sherlock just once more. "I surrender Mr. Holmes, take me to the gallows."

"Sherlock, NO!" John screamed. In his mind's eye he could see Sherlock stabbing the man over and over again until their was nothing left of the man but shreds. Instead Sherlock raised the blade high only once, heard John's scream bellow as if in a long tunnel, and with every ounce of control that his mind could exert on his body, he flipped the blade into his hand and drove the butt of the umbrella handle into Culverton's eye. The knife cut Sherlock's hand as Culverton cried out once and crumpled to the floor. Sherlock swiftly grabbed Smith's phone and turned to John, as if pleading for permission to be the more vicious, contemptible man and kill this creature. In his fragile mental state, John was afraid to say anything to Sherlock that might send him down a pit he might never crawl back from. What came next was what he wished someone would have told him before Mary died.

"Go to her. Quick." 

And with that Sherlock was running. Before he was out of the building he had Lestrade on the line.

"I need you to get an ambulance to Molly's flat! Northwest of Regent's-"

Lestrade, with utilitarian efficiency, cut him off. "We're on the way" Greg Lestrade said. But as soon as Sherlock made his way onto street level and reoriented his sense of direction he knew by the weather, the traffic patterns, and the Easterly wind that would knock of the corner light on Cavendish Ave nearest Molly's flat, and back up traffic for two blocks, that if he ran the three-quarter miles he would make it there faster on foot.

"I'll meet you there!"


	3. The Consequence

From the moment Molly made her decision, her conscience tried to stop her. The casual voice rang through immediately with:

"You do postmortems only to become a postmortem, how boring."

_Shaddup Sherlock._

"You know what's going to happen now don't you?"

 _Yes_.

"You have a medical background, you consult with forensic pathologists, its not too much of a leap even for a slowly suffocating brain to deduce, correct?"

_Not at all. If I'm lucky I'll pass out in seconds._

"But in reality it could take a few minutes."

_I'm 1.6 meters and weigh about 9 and a half stone, it shouldn't take long._

"About nine and a half stone? You work in a mortuary, be specific!" Subconscious Sherlock was now playing the violin as if in jest like a swan song.

_9 stone 8, Molly conceded to herself._

"That's better. And how long given the mass of 60.781 kilograms will it take you to hang to death considering the nominal to non-existent torque on your neck?"

_Approximately 10 minutes, 14 seconds for the slow hanging._

"I think you're being a bit generous with your survival window, I clocked 9 minutes 52 seconds." Molly's vision was starting to narrow, darken, and blur. 

_That's if the pressure on the carotid arteries doesn't cut off the blood flow to my brain first..._

"And make it swell like a giant balloon animal, quite right." 

_For Christ sake Sherlock would you stop playing that violin!_

"Certainly, after all we do need to focus now don't we, because you don't really want to die do you Molly. You just wanted to save Sherlock from the guilt of killing an innocent. But you were never very good at contingency plans, so prolonging these precious moments before you pass out is critical to your continued existence."

_Who says I don't have a contingency plan?_

"I'm you Molly, keep up. I know you don't have a plan. Now focus, what's going to kill you?"

_Asphyxiation._

"Wrong"

_Traumatic brain injury._

"Wrong." Sherlock played a sharp note that in Molly's dying brain reverberated off the walls of her mind and a deafening pitch that made her whole self ache.

"Jesus Sherlock, the point is to prolong her life, not kill her faster." The apparition of John said.

"No, the point is to get her to think! Why does no one ever just think?" protested the petulant Sherlock form.

"Perhaps because her brain is starving for oxygen, she's in an altered state on consciousness, and she's got a tantruming child trying it keep her alive."

 _Pressure on the vagus nerve,_ Molly interrupted them both. It was getting rather loud in her mind, too loud to concentrate.

"Good Hooper, if the vagus nerve becomes pinched, it can slow the heart rate and drop the blood pressure sharply. Not ideal when we need every last bit of oxygenated blood to pump to that beautiful brain of yours." Sherlock said.

_How will I know when it's happening?_

"Work it though, Molly," John continued where Sherlock left out, "you'll start to feel something like a 'head rush,' your hearing may feel muffled like your under water," but even as John spoke she was trying to read his lips more than make out his words. They were becoming less intelligible by the passing moment. "And your eyesight will blur or become tunnel-like."

Apparition Sherlock, in two strides, closed the gap between them while invading her space forcefully with anger in his voice. " You will also feel very warm very fast, much like the flustered feeling you are currently experiencing! How do you stop it?"

_Take pressure off the vagus nerve._

"Where's the vagus nerve being pressed?" John tried to help her along.

But upon Molly's hesitation, Sherlock had more impatient notions. "You'll be unconscious in three more seconds if you don't sharpen up Hooper, wake up!" Sherlock advanced even more aggressively now, forcing her back against the wall. Her head bounced so hard that she could feel her entire body shake. She was starting to feel nauseous. This was too real, too quickly.

"Do you feel that Molly? Those are the muscles in your limbs becoming rigid from lack or air. They want more and yet with each violent spasm they could drive the last of it from your lungs. You're dying, and the only one who can save you is you! You had best start taking this seriously."

 _I am!_ Molly shouted, but it came out in little more than a hoarse whisper.

"Then stop fighting me and tell me how are you going to take the pressure off!" Sherlock's hand went to her throat.

_Distributing some of the force to the spine!_

"How?" John pressed urgently, "You also have to protect the trachea from the crushing weight."

Sherlock was raising her up off the floor now. She pushed against his arm, trying to push herself up on it to get a little leeway to breath when the idea came to her. While he still held her in the grip of death, Sherlock's tone eased back from it's furious roar. "That's it Molly, don't just think it, act on it. The muscles in your neck and back have more strength then you give them credit. Use them, flex them."

Molly clenched her jaw.

"Tuck your chin and get the rope underneath you again!"

As she heard Eurus leave the room, Molly could no longer control her arms, but used all her last remaining strength to push up on the rope with her neck and chin.

Sherlock let go Molly's neck and watched her sink to the floor. "That's it. You still won't be able to breath, but if you hold on this way you'll stay conscious, using the oxygen that's left in your system 2-3 minutes more. Nod if you understand me."

Molly, no longer able to speak, nodded quietly on the floor, not sure if she could bear it that long. John sat down next to her and took hold of her hand. Sherlock sat down across from her with his back to the living room table of her mind palace and miraculously produced a squash ball. He then proceeded to smash the ball methodically into the wall behind her, catching it as he spoke. In was never more than three or four inches from her ear at any moment, so Molly tried to keep perfectly still. But the hammering of the squash ball was almost all she could hear.

"You may think that was harsh, but at least I didn't slap you." He began, She gave him a quizzical, confused expression. "Never mind..." Even subconscious Sherlock struggled to make small talk conversation. Go figure. "Did you know that the entire process of an unsuccessful neck-break hanging from start to finish, due to miscalculation of the body's weight, or the drop distance of the fall, or even the noose being tied incorrectly, can be anywhere from five to twenty minutes?" Sherlock mused.

"Not helping, Sherlock," John replied, and Molly gave him a small hand squeeze in part as thanks and in part to dull the pain. Her ears were ringing so loudly she thought she might cry.

"I never said this would be easy Molly, by the end it's going to be excruciating. It's also not going to be pretty. But then who am I talking to, you work in a morgue, you know how cruel and ugly death can be." He gave a small scoffing laugh which Molly returned with a smile. "Your tongue will start to swell, if you're unlucky your face might as well. The tongue produces excess saliva, so some drooling may occur. Sorry about that."

Molly felt mortified.

"If its any consolation, I will try to keep your eyes closed throughout the whole ordeal. It'll be less of a shock when I find you... _they_ find you I mean." Her friends.

Molly mouthed the words thank you but no sound came, only some moisture (of course that arrogant sod was right) which she dabbed away with the corner of her lab coat sleeve.

"Save your voice, you're going to need it."

"You're doing great Molly," John encouraged. "You're just past a minute and twenty seconds." It felt at least ten times that long to Molly. Even as she shut her eyes they continued to water in agony, though she tried her best to hide it, even from her subconscious selves. She banged the back of her head to the wall to try to drown out the sound of the ball.

"I see the way you look when you think we don't see you Molly. *smash* I know it hurts. *smash* Right now you feel the pressure *smash* building up in your head *smash* as though at any moment *smash* it will explode. The sound *smash* that you're hearing right now *smash* is your own heart. *smash* I'll keep the rhythm going as steady as I can as long as I can. *smash* It'll make you suffer, you'll be in pain. *smash* But that pain will keep you alive. It's not easy, but it'll work. *smash* It'll give you time."

" _Thank you Sherlock_ ," Molly said, this time finding enough voice to be heard, though in the struggle she could feel her nostrils flare.

"I said save your voice, you're in oxygen debt which is causing distress now. It's only going to get worse from here. Fight the urge to panic." 

"You better go now John. I'll be okay. Give Rosie my love," Molly said.

John gave her hand a final squeeze and said "One minute 58 seconds" before he was gone. Winked out of existence. Time was moving even more slowly. 

"You have moments Molly. Draw them out, make them last, make them count. Because they're really not for you are they?"

Molly could only shake her head _no_ now, and even that was a chore. Her spine was a fraying string and everything hurt. This is for my friends, she thought.

"Molly, stay focused, stay with me..." but just like that as Sherlock threw the squash ball the wall behind Molly disappeared and the ball skittered off into the distance. She heard it bounce once, maybe twice, before it went silent. She felt light headed, and with no wall to lean against she conceded to lie down and tried to relieve the dizziness. Her neck giving way to the noose. Momentarily, conscience Sherlock was next to her.

_How long did I last?_

"Long enough." Sherlock replied.

_How long?_

"Two minutes 17 seconds," he sighed and pushed his hair back from his face. Frustrated or exhausted Molly couldn't tell.

 _Not very long then._ Molly felt a little ashamed that she did not have more fight in her.

"You did fine, Molly Hooper." Sherlock took her hand. 

_Now my heart stops beating steadily and I black out if I remember correctly. Did I drool?_

"No." Sherlock smiled.

_I didn't lose bowel control did I? That would be embarrassing._

Sherlock laughed, I mean really laughed. "No! You do seem to worry an awful lot about the strangest thing in this head of yours. Would you like me to play something to take your mind off it?"

 _Whatever you like._ Just as Sherlock began to play, Molly felt a spark of something comforting. _You did get something wrong though Sherlock._

"What might that be?"

_Thank heavens, there's something he doesn't know. I can die happy._

"Be serious now Molly, what did I miss?"

_I spent the last two minutes 17 seconds being serious, aren't I allowed some joy in the end?_

"Molly Hooper, what did I miss?!"

_Who said I didn't have a contingency plan?_

"Oh god, what was it? Don't make me deduce it, clearly must not have been a very good plan by the state of you."

_Not an it, a who._

"Who was it then?"

_Don't you know?_

"Know who Molly? Molly? Answer me please. Molly, wake up!"


	4. The Scar on the Left

"Molly!" From the moment he stepped through her apartment door, breathing heavily from his top mile pace, deductions began to spawn unbidden, about how Eurus had gotten in, where she'd hidden, how she'd rigged the makeshift suspension system mostly out of the linens in Molly's closet, and how long Molly had Molly failed to notice her there? Enough time to remove her lab coat and lay out fresh food for Toby, but not enough time to make it to the kitch to arm herself. Sherlock was one foot in and one foot out of his mind.

"No, no, no, Molly stay with me." Why did he say something clearly irrelevant? She was here with him obviously, but she couldn't hear him, what good would that do? She was unresponsive to his voice, which sprouted more deductions the he quickly pushed aside. She was also unresponsive to touch when he grabbed her by the waist to release the strain on her neck. She wasn't heavy, nine stone eight pounds, but the inanimate weight of her made his leg ache. "Lestrade, loosen this now!"

With Lestrade's help to undo the binding, Sherlock set Molly down on the wooden floor. "How much longer for the ambulance?"

"Two minutes more," Lestrade prompted as we made sure the rest of the flat was clear of imminent threat. Sherlock knew it meant three by the way he adjusted his collar. "Do you know CPR?"

Sherlock gave him a withering glance. He may have deleted a lot of useless knowledge over the years, but first aid wasn't among the jettison. However, he was flooded by deductions now that could not be blocked out. The grayish tint under her fingernails meant hypoxia, the fact that those nails were frayed back from when she had pulled herself up on the rope gripping tightly meant at least an hour of struggle. How long had Eurus watched her? He peered beneath her eyelids where he saw pinpoint pupils and hemorrhaging. The depth of ligature marks on her neck suggested suggested damage. He knew their was no pulse without having to palpate for it, and so he began compression.

"Don't forget to breathe!" 

"Her airway is compromise. Without an assistive device, she won't get any air. This way at least her heart can pump any oxygenated blood to her brain where she needs it most!" If her brain wasn't injured already, he thought.

"I meant you Sherlock, you don't look well."

It was then that doubts started to creep in, as Sherlock noticed things about Molly he didn't mean to. The wear of her hands from the morgue, but the right more than the left because she was right handed, the uneven wear on the instep of her shoe indicating that one leg was slightly longer that the other. He was haunted by something Culverton had said: "dead people...look like things. I like to make people into things, then you can own them." Molly's hands, Molly's fingers, her legs, her arms, her face, it was like he was dissecting her piece by piece. It was like she was falling apart into a compilation of anatomical things. "Agggh!"

"Sherlock what's the matter? You're doing fine, hang in there for her." Lestrade was trying to pull him back from the edge.

Molly wasn't just a compilation of things working in unison. Not just a heart, two lungs, a small mouth, dark hair, all halting in speech, with no eye contact, yet a firm handshake. She was Molly-bloody-Hooper, she had a presence, had a round-about matter of speaking, and laugh that she hated to hear and so was self-conscious about laughing too much at party. _Has, present tense_. She _has_ those qualities, but they were nowhere to be found in this room, in the person he was looking at. "She's Molly. She's a person, not a thing. No one owns her, how could someone even go about that, it's ridiculous."

"Sherlock I'll take it from here." Lestrade resumed first aid when Sherlock had unknowingly stopped. "You need to get control of yourself mate. You're having a panic attack." Sherlock knew that feeling well, much like shock. Immediately he called John, who answered on the first ring and wasted no time mincing words. "Mycroft's stable, he's been taken to St. Barts. How's Molly?"

More deductions flooded his mind palace, paralyzing his decisions. _Caring is not an advantage. All lives end, all hearts are broken. People die, it's the one thing all human beings can be relied upon to do._ "John, I don't know what to do. We need your help." 

"What's happened, is she conscious?"

"No." Lestrade said.

"Is she breathing, does she have a pulse?"

Sherlock managed to find his voice "Lestrade's taken over her aid. John I can't make it stop, the deductions. Tell me my deductions are wrong!"

"Sherlock, I've wanted nothing more, and never so intensely as now, than to tell you that you're wrong. But in this moment you stay calm and you help her, just..."

"I can't John! I can't! None of my deductions are telling me how! She's more than a list of things, she more than what's broken, but I can't see past that, I can't see her John, I see this thing, this body..."

"STOP! The last thing you need to hear is the sound of your own stupid voice, and the first thing is a slap from Molly!" John was trying his best to hold back his own fears. "But since she's in no condition, I'll stand in as her proxy. Sherlock Holmes, I swear if you don't do something useful I'll break both your arms and make it look like an accident." John paused with a heavy heart. "You can't just solve this one Sherlock. Or stab it, or shoot it, or reason with it. So please, just help her. Hold her hand."

"Alright John." Sherlock was almost ashamed to look Lestrade in the eye as he did his best to keep Molly alive, which was more than Sherlock was capable of. Greg had no ill-will for Sherlock, because it confirmed and closed as case that he'd kept open half his career; Sherlock Holmes was a broken, but good man. "I'm here Molly. For whatever its worth."

* * *

 Twenty-two seconds later, the paramedics came and Molly went away. Words were exchanged without meaning, he tried to make his way out to the ambulance with her, but there was no room to spare. Greg offered him a ride tailing the ambulance, which Sherlock absentmindedly waved off. Lestrade wasted no time taking off, saying something to the effect of "keep your phone on" or maybe "keep your head on" and "I'll keep you informed." The DS team were going to cordon the crime, but Sherlock summarily kicked them all out of the flat and slammed the door. _Stand down your men Lestrade. SH_ was all he sent, and moments later was shocked to discover a singular reply, _Done. -Greg._ The longer reply was sent to his sergeants:  _The scene belongs to Sherlock, as long as he needs it. Comply with whatever he asks, whatever he needs. If he leaves, keep eyes on him for his own good._

The noise had stopped, the flat was empty, and Sherlock was shivering. Surveying the flat for all the essentials, phone, food, water, tellie, books, records, mirror, shelves, there was no sign of a struggle, proceeding to the kitchen the only thing out of place was a half finished cup of coffee. Molly preferred tea but kept coffee around for guests. Eurus had sat right here in this kitchen, unobserved, leisurely waiting for Molly to come home: allowing her to take off her shoes and her lab coat and earrings (Sherlock had never noticed that Molly's ears weren't pierced until he saw the clip ons next to her keys), to settle in and feel at home before confronting her. The ire in Sherlock started to become acrid in his throat. _What else had she disturbed, what else had she touched that she hadn't the smallest entitlement to, what else had she taken from this place that was supposed to be safe?_  He was a whirlwind now, flinging through cubbards, cabinets, bins, inspecting anything out of it's place as if something could lead him to his sister, but with each new finding there was only the intense desire for violence. He got to the final door, which must be her bedroom, and hesitated. It was private, it meant something for most people, out of all places it was where most valuables are kept by instinct. Not always worth the most, but certainly the most important. Bracing himself as though Eurus could be just beyond, he turned the nob and saw the stated of the room and shouted so viciously that he heard a DS running through the entry way.

"You think your clever don't you, you think you can amuse your baby brother with a bedtime story to chase away the monsters and I won't notice the real one? It's not a game Eurus!" The wardrobe was open, several clothes strewn about as if tried on and discarded, the nearest of which was a jumper with a coffee stain. _She helped herself to Molly's food. She'd worn Molly's clothes. And slept in Molly's bed._  

"Sir are you alright?" the DS said, probably for the third or forth time but Sherlock had only heard the once because he had murder on his mind. When he made to pick up one of Molly's jackets and return it to it's rightful place, the inexperienced sergeant made the mistake of speaking. "Best not move it sir, it's evidence."

"Don't delude yourself into thinking you could deduce more from it's position in a few hours than I have in a few moments." As he returned the garment to a hanger, that's when he noticed the dress at the far left of the wardrobe, left in this case meaning back since the rods only went left to right, Molly was right handed, and wardrobe sat on the wall parallel to her but bed furthest from the entrance door so the best vantage was from the bed which meant she would work through it right to left. Left meaning back, back meaning rarely worn mostly out of boredom or dislike, but paradoxically furthest back meaning rarely worn but typically most favored, as for a special occasion. Furthest back on the left in Molly's wardrobe, clearly visible the other articles scattered out of the way, was Molly's Christmas dress. From the state of it, only ever worn once. Only ever for him. _Left pristinely in place for Sherlock to see because Eurus had deduced exactly that, but first._ It is what broke the string inside of him. He began to cry, but also...he began to run.

As fast as he came he tore through the flat like a storm, railing back toward the entryway. Family came first, and for Sherlock that meant Mrs. Hudson, the Watsons, Lestrade, Mycroft, _Molly_ , they were his family. Molly had been their for all of them. To watch Rosie when John was in no state in mourning for Mary, to console Mrs. Hudson when she thought Sherlock was dead, to help Lestrade keep his spirits up in the wake of Moriarty's scandal that defaced the Yard, and to scare the hell out of Mycroft Holmes with her strange overflowing sentiments for Sherlock coupled with fits of violence. She was the heart of them all, and to target her it was an affront to them all. He. would. end. this.

If not for one last observation, Sherlock would have gone down a path from which he would never find a return. But as the rain began to fall in sleeted waves Sherlock noticed. Eurus had waited for Molly to settle. Coat, earrings, keys, shoes, and placing a bowl on the counter that had not been empty before. "Where is he?"

"Who?" the novice DS said, trailing in the wake destruction.

"Not who, the _cat_. Where is her cat?!" He hated repeating himself, but he did so, impatiently.

Two other officers joined in the conversation now. "We thought the killer might have taken it," "or killed it." Sherlock missed Anderson with a pang of guilt.

"No you addled morons, that cat was here and alive when we entered, the bowl on the counter was a quarter way filled with food, now it's not, so unless one of you was particularly hungry tell me where the bloody cat is! By all accounts it's Molly's favorite..." but he answered his own question before the first thought concluded. "DS #1 left the door open when he trailed in after after me and DS #2 and #3 didn't think to close it, correct?"

Each of them seemed to shrink an inch in wordless reply.

For a moment, Sherlock was torn by his deepest polar sentiments. He knew his sister was as elusive as her name, and that his best hope was a timely pursuit. But his thoughts wandered, as they sometimes did, to Redbeard. Molly had her own Redbeard. And she would want him safe.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Sherlock turned his collar up to the rain. "I gather Lestrade told at least one of you to follow me. Do your jobs and while you're at it, help me find the cat. It's a calico tabby with yellow eyes, and it's bone idle so it couldn't have gotten very far."

"What's it called?" as DS #2.

What a stupid question, Sherlock thought. Rarely do cats come when called, they respond to vocal tones rather than words. Still, it was rather confounding that Sherlock couldn't recall the name. " _Cat_."

* * *

Lestrade received the text from DS Miller and read it aloud: _Sherlock has left the flat._

"Where's my brother headed? He's in no state to be loose." Mycroft replied from his hospital bed as he finished signing his sworn police statement.

Lestrade was perplexed as he read the next response, "They're trying to find a cat..."

Mycroft took a guess "Ms. Hooper's pet presumably." He handed Lestrade back is pen. "I'd devote some resources to the cause if I were you. From the beginning my brother has always had strange ways of processing traumatic events. This cat chase is the far preferable alternative."

"To what exactly?"

"Nothing that you have the clearance to concern yourself with."

 


	5. Recovery

"Mycroft they're not giving you anything very potent for the pain, you should look into that."

"Whatever you suggest Sherlock, I've no interest in." A pause. "You're using me as a crutch to hide from your problems Sherlock. I don't much care for that. Go and see her."

"Mycroft."

"Go see her now, baby brother. Your window is narrowing as is my patience."

"There's no point. She passed at 2'oclock this morning. Her body is in the morgue. It's done, it's over. No more Molly."

"I'm aware Sherlock, wherever I am, whatever surrounds me I get regular updates."

"Then why on earth would you tell me to go see her cold corpse!"

"Sherlock, apart from the usual resentment, are you transferring to me the blame for Molly Hooper's death?"

"Don't be absurd, what have they put you on?"

"Are you angry that I survived this harrowing experience where Ms. Hooper perished?"

"This in insane, nurse sedate this man! Nurse!"

"Then please put your emotional outbursts aside and listen to me when I say she won't be in this hospital forever. This is your only opportunity to wax nostalgic. Sooner rather than later, she will be moved to the local mortuary of her choosing and burned to ash or buried in the ground as most humans tend to prefer, or if she's quite clever she may have donated her body to science. In any case, once she's buried or scattered or a cut up cadaver, then it's well and truly over brother and you will never get another chance to put her to rest here," Mycroft tapped his temple. "The thought of her will wander freely until it drives you mad..."

"-I'm not like Eurus-" Sherlock tried to interject but was overruled as Mycroft continued to roll on.

"...Slowly at first, perhaps her face will appear in the faces of others, or you'll hear her voice on the radio in the morning, or Mrs. Hudson will make you tea and when you look down from reading the paper you'll call out her name because you've imagined Molly has moved the cup. But she hasn't, because she's not there, because you never even asked Mrs. Hudson for tea, merely thought to and was distracted by a memory of her cat or one of her garish sweaters. And over time she will corrode your memories, logic, and reason unless you build her a room, close the door, and walk away. No Sherlock, you're not like Eurus. You are far worse; your passions and tempers run deeper. If you go mad brother I'll be out of a job for creating a terror the world has never known before and I will never forgive myself."

Mycroft's fits of sentiment were as sudden and world shattering as they were infrequent. Sherlock had nothing to match it.

"In my briefcase, you will find a pack of low tar cigarettes. You're welcome to them, they're horrendous, but they take the edge off."

"Thank you Mycroft. You'll keep awhile without me to fend off the goldfish?"

"Why do you think I asked for ice chips?"

"Not for the drink you've tucked away in the lining of your case?" He taunted Mycroft with the flask.

"Put that back or so help me, I do not want nurse Wiggins to confiscate that! No, Sherlock, the ice chips are for target practice."

"Best to keep your spirits up."

"Indeed."

* * *

 Only the third elevator led to the 4th floor of St Bart's where the morgue was located. Operating the elevator to that specific floor required an electronic key card, and thankfully, ironically, he had Molly's. They must improved security around here, she'd been gone 17 hours and her clearance was still active. If you were in a lab coat (as her was) and no one bothered to look too hard, you'd have an endless supply of corpses. What a sham.

Sherlock disembarked the elevator and waved the key fob past the door on the right. The dead welcomed him as he stepped into their home. All the bodies were neatly stowed away in drawers to right, left, and center, save one body still on the exam table, draped in a single white sheet which he dare not move. He did not want to look at her now as something like a discarded shell. He wanted to remember the best of Molly Hooper.

"You've got the best seat in the house. Seems only fitting, this is your morgue after all." He picked up the postmortem chart at the end of the table and idled through it.

 _Yes it is_ , apparition Molly replied.

"Ah you're to be cremated. Good choice, the next time I have a go at this I might do the same."

 _I was debating donating my body to science, but at this hospital you'r_ _e liable to be the impromptu experiment of consulting detectives. I thought to pass._

"I don't know how to do this."

_Like you do anything Sherlock, make a start._

In his mind there was a room as sterile and impersonal as this hospital work space where he was expected to attach and tether every memory of her that he wanted to keep, but how was he to choose? He started with the sweaters.

"You have seven jumpers in your current rotation, the oldest is an oatmeal gray with cherry red buttons which you only keep despite how terribly its stretched - partly in the wash and partly from being heavier set in your early twenties than you are today - because it was a birthday gift for your brother. It's color and fisherman's cable knit suggests a man's sensibility, and the repeated darning of the elbows, I say repeated because the yarn thread varies in shade, suggests sentimental value of a close relation, but it wasn't your late father who gave it to you because he'd learned from experience not to shop for woman but to let them shop for themselves - the proverbial 'teach a man to fish.' Your brother, being unmarried and by extension unlearnt and still optimistic, did his best to pick out something you'd like by selecting an on-trend cherry print more suitable to a teenager than a grown woman. Because it's overlarge and rather itchy material, you only wear it over other articles of clothing, with exception to wearing it under that baggy khaki jacket in an effort to hide your figure when you are feeling self conscious. It is by far my least favorite of your jumpers."

_Which is your favorite?_

"In good time. If I recall, you also have a ribbed rainbow striped jumper, one with a scallop pattern that resemble a child's rendition of a fish, two ugly Christmas jumpers in Fair Isle print that you do not reserve for Christmas but inflict upon us all almost year round whenever the weather can tolerate. I'm missing one in that I hope is in my subconscious somewhere, if I didn't discard it."

 _The one I'm wearing perhaps?_  Apparition Molly suggested. _It's teal green._

"Oh that's right the green jumper, the newest and most sensible addition to your collection. After years of trial and error you've finally settled in to a color that suits you."

_But it's not your favorite?_

"No, that distinction goes to your corral button down, the one you were wearing when you first introduced us to Tom. I kept thinking how pale and sickly it made him look in comparison."

_You didn't just think it, you said it out loud once._

"Really? I must have edited that part out. Come to think of it, you also have an affinity for blouses with front facing ruffles, smocking, and plaid or floral print, or some combination thereof."

_So the last impression you'll have of me is my wardrobe?_

"Not only that, I remember your cat's name is T-Thomas."

_No._

"Terrance, no Tuppance."

_No._

"I'll get there in the end...Toby!"

_My legacy for Sherlock Holmes are my jumpers and my cat._

"No Molly. It's not the jumpers, it's the fact that despite appearances and protests I love them all and the way each of them tells me something about your mood. I can always approach you in the cherry sweater and ask a favor, but the teal sweater means I'd better bring chips first. John and I take turns at which jumper you'll wear when we next see you, John always loses apart from Christmas and Easter. And your cat Toby was the last thing I saw when I left your flat the other day. He escaped in the commotion. It's the fact that I spent an hour in the rain looking for him, he covers his tracks well, and only after recruiting two members of the homeless network to the search party did I find him under the bins of Al's Takeout. But when I brought him back to your flat, he wouldn't move, eat, or do anything apart from nest in your lab coat, so I confiscated him and brought him back to Mrs. Hudson's where I've since been calling him 'cat' and feeding him everything Mrs. Hudson makes that I detest.

It's the fact that I wish I could see you in that daisy yellow dress you wore to John's wedding when you stabbed Tom in the hand with a fork, and then at Rosie's christening when you stole my phone for texting, threw it in the baptismal font, and proceeded to the confessional. I want to tell you how good the cupcakes were that you left at Baker Street for my birthday even after we went out for cake, even though you told Mrs. Hudson to take the credit for them after her batch burnt. Child's play! I know Mrs. Hudson doesn't make chocolate cupcakes like that, excluding the medicinal ones...

I'm not good at this." Sherlock stuck up his cigarette and took a deep draw. It warmed him in a way that nothing else had since his last words with Molly.

_It's grieving Sherlock, no one's supposed to be good at it._

"Well it's not my kind of grief. I need something stronger than nicotine for that. I have all these memories of Molly, I can lock them away but the real problem, the final problem, is that there will never be more."

_Logically you can't know that. You shared different moments than anyone else,_

"She slapped me nine times you know."

_so it stands to reason that John and Mrs. Hudson would have memories to share that you never knew. Whether that's tomorrow, or years from now, you might remember something new._

Sherlock felt momentarily at ease as he filed away yet more facets of Molly Hooper: her short stature, her favorite songs to hum when performing an autopsy (though Mrs. Hudson would cry indecency), the damp straw color of her hair which she had recently dyed a dark amber brown. Why had she done that? He hated unsolved, answered things. He tried to settle himself that not knowing would be fine.

_One last thing you ought to ask yourself Sherlock; was caring for her worth it in the end? Did it help her? Did it help you?_

It took a long while for Sherlock to answer, because holding back just shy of the breaking point was a strenuous. He took a short reprieve from the depths of his mind by answering a text alert of his phone. A welcome distraction. 

 

 

> > How are you? MH

Mycroft must still be in a considerable amount of discomfort, he never texted if he could talk.

 

 

> >>Out of ice chips already Mycroft? SH

On this rare occasion, Sherlock did not concentrate his thoughts on connecting lines and dots. He let it go free as he went though his last lingering memories of Molly, putting them away reluctantly but reverently. In this way the answer came to him slowly, and in pieces, but with a depth he was not prepared for. "No, it did not help her, it put her in harm's way. It caused her to be viciously clever, which did not suit her. Her aptitude was something that should never have been vicious. I disappointed her, I think, more than I impressed her. It made her calloused, part of her anyway, because she needed to be harder to keep up, and she did. The opposite could be said of me. It confused me, made me soft. All in all we broke each other" a pause "The chemistry is simple and very destructive, and yet we were both broken to begin with so if you believe the old adage, perhaps when we were put back together we made a better version of ourselves.

Did it help? Of course not. But Molly had a kind of compassion that makes words and reason to describe it seem inadequate, if not irrelevant. And in the end she decided to share it with me. Yes, it was worth it."

With that, with heartbreak, he closed the door in his mind that led to everything he loved about Molly Hooper and some of the things he didn't. But by virtue of being memories of her, he really loved them all. There was only one thing left, it was time to stop talking to ghosts.

"Thank you for being my guide, as always. One last time." and Sherlock tossed the stub of his cigarette into the autopsy kidney tray.

* * *

 As he turned leave the mortuary, Sherlock's text alert sounded again. He was in no mood to speak to his brother, nor anyone else, and thought to ignore it. But his subconscious had other plans.

"I'd answer that if I were you, Sherlock."

Sherlock couldn't be bothered to pause of turn around, but laughed at his own sense of humor. _Oh, but you are me._ Still, he glanced casually down at the phone screen. The door behind him slowly closed, slower still with each passing moment that he read, but could not understand:

 

 

>  > Not Mycroft. MH

"I'm worried about you Sherlock, you seem a bit out of touch with what's real and what's not."

When the thought hit him, his fingers were still on the handle. It slammed his mind like a flash-bang grenade, the air around him would not stop vibrating and everything he saw was so bright at vivid he dared not trust his eyes.

"Am I dreaming?" He turned.

"No."

"Am I dead?"

"You're in the right place, but no." Sherlock took a step toward the exam table, a lurching step to confirm the mystery figure under the white sheet. "I wouldn't do that, you've had enough of a shock today, and the resemblance is quite striking." 

"Am I high?" The walls were pulsing around him, around her. The chemical reactions within were flooding his system with endorphins.

"I've seen you at your worst. Right now, you're fair to middling, with a bit of a natural high."

Sherlock's world was moving again at 67 thousand miles an hour.

"I thought 'not dead' might be too on the nose."

"How is it possible?" he said, frozen in place on spot.

"You've done this before, you tell me."

"But I had you."

"You still have me. I had a contingency. I had -"

"Mycroft..." Molly nodded in confirmation, "but I watched you die. I felt you die."

"That was true, in part. It had to be real. And I have to stay dead until Eurus is contained. It's safer that way; I can't be leveraged against any of you."

"How are you alive?" 

Molly paused, contemplating her next words carefully. Some things couldn't be told without risk, others couldn't be shared at all. But Molly new his mind. Sherlock hated an unanswered question. She didn't want that always between them. So she implored, "does it really matter Sherlock?"

It did not take Sherlock another moment. In a matter of strides he took off the lab coat, ruffled his hair, and said. "Not at all!" as he kissed Molly Hooper as he'd meant to do for years: _properly_.

**Author's Note:**

> Research:  I did some research on hanging to get the specs on causes of death by strangulation. It's not perfect but this is vaguely what the process of a botched hanging or short drop hanging would feel like, including stimulation of the vagnus nerve causing syncope. Not that you could necessarily survive. 
> 
> I also researched a few tropical diseases before I settled on plain old hantavirus, though by far this is not my area, if you cant tell by the botched medical terminology.


End file.
